GW Lightning Arc 8 Grief
by LoveyouHateyou
Summary: The wars are over. Zechs is left grieving beyond reason for the loss of his alter ego. Duo is trying to help. No slash, a bit of shonen ai, a bit of Lucy Noin.


**The Lightning Arc 9 - Grief**

Fandom: Gundam Wing  
Rating: M/NC-15 for m/m relationship  
Pairing: Zechs and Treize  
Warnings: m/m love, some swearing - if you are hoping for explicit scenes though, you are likely to be disappointed.  
Spoilers: everywhere, in all my stories. If you don't know what happened to Treize, you will know after this one.

Summary: The wars are over. Zechs is left grieving beyond reason for the loss of his alter ego. Is there any purpose to life if you have lost half your soul?

**xxx**

Another day. Timeless, useless, dull. Are our wars truly over? What shall I do now?

He had no right.  
No right to leave me like this.  
For he had made me his long before I knew; we were two halves that belonged together as one, and now he's gone because he chose so. He betrayed me. He abandoned me.

"Zechs? Can you hear me?" Duo gets up and closes in.

I cannot hear anything or anyone. I don't want to. I want to plunge into darkness and stay there forever, with him.

"He's gone, Zechs." Thin fingers alighting on my slumped shoulder. I try to squirm away, but this spiderthin hand stays put, even claws into my flesh a little. I relent. It does not matter.

He cannot be gone like this.  
No, he's waiting for me. I know he is because I can feel it… through all the raging pain inside me and the bottomless stillness that fills me when I'm too exhausted to hurt anymore.

"He's dead. He's not waiting for you, he's dead. Gone. He's not coming back, never, not ever. He is dead."

Never... I will never hear his voice again, angry or arrogant or kind and soothing; I will never feel his touch, never have him close, never sense his warmth again. Not ever. The magnitude of this is crushing me. How long is an eternity? Too long to wait for it to finish. It has to end sooner.

Duo's lapful of engineering books drop, scattering over the floor, little notes fluttering about as he launches himself at me. "Whatcha doin'? Zechs – oh no, Zechs, listen, please, Zechs, gimme the gun – no, please gimme the damn gun, Zechs – I'm beggin' you, I can't – look, you're stronger, I can't hold on to you much longer, oh damn you, please, please, please, the gun, Zechs, gimme the feckin' gun! Please!"

I can't shoot Duo who stupidly hangs on to my wrist and tries to wrench the gun from my grip, the muzzle poking into his stomach. It's his fault I'm not dead yet. His fault alone. He scooped me up from the hospital where they put me after it was all over and I had nowhere to go, not wanting to bother Lucy with all this shit. She deserves better. So perhaps I should shoot him after all?

"Zechs? Oh jeez, now look, gimme that thing and I'll make a deal with you, ne? A deal? A promise? If you give it to me now, I'll let you have five minutes, look – five – and you'll think it over, right?" His eyes wide and frantic, he waves the spread fingers of one skinny hand before my face. "Five minutes, and then you can have the gun back and do as you like, so if you wanna die so badly, you can blow your brains out after that."

Five minutes. Sounds like a deal. He grabs the gun and sits on it. "Right, five minutes," he says, "and I get to talk, while you listen, ne? Please? Just listen, Zechs."

Should have known. Treize, you betrayed me, you left me behind, I'm lost, so lost…

"You think you're the only one who lost someone? Been there, done that, Zechs. He did it so you could live. Wanna chicken out now?"

He did it so Earth could live.

"You're part o' that! Part of life. Part of him. Who's gonna be part of him if you quit now, huh? Your call, anyway. We all lost, yanno. Someone, something. Ourselves. Please, we're so few, so few of us. So few who'd understand… you're one of us, Zechs."

I'm your enemy. I don't understand. Why do you like living? I long for silence for this pain is burning me up alive.

"The war's over." Duo fidgets, his eyes dark and watery. "Yanno, what you've done... you must be special, really."

Only because he chose me. He made me who I am. He made me special. I am nothing now.

Duo keeps wriggling, uncomfortable from sitting on the weapon, I suppose. "Didn't he want someone to remember?" he whispers. "The stuff Zero did?" A small pause, before he adds, "It nearly drove me insane first time round. I could never have let it into my head again, yanno. To feel what your enemy feels when ya kill 'em..." He shudders.

I had no choice because I never knew it would be like this. Now I must have silence. I always had silence when he was close, decadent, haughty, exuding strength and confidence. For I knew his mind, too, beneath all those layers, and I loved it for its clarity. I am an engineer; to me, clarity is beauty. Treize was beautiful, and now he is gone, having turned me over to the chaos of life. I have this noise in my head all the time, the yells and screams Zero drilled into me while I was fighting, maiming, killing – before Zero, it was all like a game, the console with its calm green screen, co-ordinates, numbers, trajectories, little blinking lights and gauges. Death at the flick of my wrist, at the press of a button, fast, breathless, pressed into my seat by the g-force of the flying suit. It would have been like playing at an arcade: zap, pilot down; you gain one hundred points.

But Treize put Zero in my head, and it is still there, shrieking at me... so loud, and he won't give me silence any more. For he is gone.

"Zechs – what?"

Time's up. The gun.

Duo fiddles, squirms, produces the gun and dangles it by the trigger before my nose.

Click.

This howl I hear, is that my own?  
I can't stop screaming, it's like the screams have taken on a life of their own, they burst and tear and pour out of me until my voice breaks, I catch my breath and begin anew, yelling the life out of me.

Duo goes as still as a mouse, but when I my voice gives out and my breath comes in painful little yelps, he says, "C'mon, Zechs, you didn't think I'd leave the bullet in?"

His hand on my shoulder is warm and hard.

Treize, Treize, Treize…

Duo is ghostly pale, and he sounds barely steady as he shakes me a bit and tries to reason, "Look, Zechs, he's gone. All you can do is start over. With us to help, if you want. We all need help. If not, well… I can't keep stoppin' you, if that's what you wanna do – here."

The round. Cool, smooth, a promise of silence that would not be broken. He takes the gun back, replaces the round and snaps the magazine shut, then returns the thing to me. "Here." His voice cracks.

I'm done. I have no purpose any longer.

And now he looks... cross. Angry, disappointed, and yes, deeply hurt. What right does he have to be hurt? I know pain. I AM pain. "You have obligations to the living," he reminds me sharply. "We all do, yanno. War's over, for us as well. Ruled us for too long anyway. We got another forty years, fifty with any luck, each of us, and we only live once. Might as well do it properly, ne?"

Only death would be proper for me, after all that happened. After he tore away from me, leaving me to this agony. He had no right to deny me like this.

"Isn't that what he died for?" Duo keeps picking into the mush in my head. "You gonna throw it away? Man, if he'd see you now..."

How odd he should say this into these thoughts of mine... How clumsy. Mean. Unimportant. I hurt. He shivers with cold. He looks so thin and small, all the soldiering hasn't made him older, or fuller, or bigger. It only gave him nightmares and a shell that he's now struggling to put aside. How brave of him. And then his hands suddenly come up to cup my cheeks, his eyes seeking mine; bony fingers stroking my skin, wobbly whispers trying to get through to my pain-sodden brain.

But I had Zero in my mind when Treize died, and I felt it all: I felt him burn and tear, half crushed and trapped in that blazing cabin, I heard him scream in agony, I felt his heartbeat hammering and the noise bursting into his ears, could sense him choke and burn and bleed to death – every single second of his dying was in my head, in my mind, in my heart.

I will never be the same for I died with him.

Eyes squeezing shut, Duo edges closer. "Zechs?" He is quaking. "Let me warm you, here, I'm cold too, yanno. Was this how he died? Like that?"

A scorched lump of flesh in a tangle of metal and melting plastic… the human soul of a war machine. Yes, Treize died like that. And it was my doing.

"For us," Duo breathes raggedly. "For Earth."

For Earth... I am not that grand. I am not a generous man. Earth never deserved such a sacrifice; I hate Earth for having accepted it, and without hesitation or regret, I'd give Earth and Space and Peace to have him back. What should I do now?

"Help us, please. Help Lucy, and Une. Let us help you."

But I cannot… I'm not complete. I'm dead inside.

Duo lets go of me then, and for the first time since I know him, he drops his head to his knees, wraps his arms round them and begins to shake with shuddering little sobs, bitter and harsh, his bony frame wracked by every one of them, his braid trembling, and now and then he scrubs angrily at his eyes. But I can't do anything, can I? What would you do, Treize? You called him your distant friend, but I never found out what this strange friendship of yours was all about. Is a sliver of your soul left in this youth? Could it be…

Duo?

He draws up his narrow shoulders and folds into himself a bit more, but keeps crying. I don't want this, it intrudes on my own pain. There is too much darkness without you, Treize. Should I put my hand on his arm? Perhaps it'll soothe him somewhat. There. He falls silent, still heaving, then gleams up at me from beneath damp, sticky bangs and tries a smile, a meagre attempt at his old grin. Wiping his face down with the back of a thin hand, he sniffles a shaky thanks. He is easy to comfort.

I am not. I am hollow with nothing but pain to fill me.

For I can't stop hearing you: screaming inside me, yelling at me the unspeakable horror of those last moments, of burning alive, your guts spilling from your torn body, of the desperate plight for a quicker end. Pride and beauty and honour, all vanished in those last few seconds when the need for them was gone too. Was there time for doubt? Or were you so sure it never rose, not even then when you were reduced to this, a soldier dying in utter misery, a human being begging for release… And I heard you scream my name.

Milliardo.

I was in your thoughts while you were dying, and I felt what you felt:  
You loved me.  
You loved me.  
You loved me.

"Milliardo?"

I catch a glimpse of Duo's smile, soft and sad through his messy hair, before Lucy is all over me, wraps me in her arms, her whisper, her frantic heartbeat. Soldiergirl… my poor Lucy…

"I love you too," she whispers. No tears. She is sweetness and steel, a good match for me, someone to hold on and to understand. You trained us well, Treize. All of us. You shared a sliver of yourself with us in the hope we would be strong. Is that what you were trying to leave us with? A piece of your mind, your skills, your sense of honour that could never be shaken?

The beauty of your clarity... you never doubted us.  
Is this what allowed you to leave?  
Were we your hope?

"We have orders to follow," she says, her voice heavy. "And work to do."

Orders?

She brushes my hair out of my face and pulls me close against her soft chest. I can hear her heart thudding, jumpy like a caged bird, and know she would have been crying on her own before coming here, called by Duo who has snuck his hand around my wrist and is holding on, though whether to prevent me from using the gun, or to warm himself, I cannot tell. Lucy winds her free arm round his thin neck and draws him in with us.

"Orders to live. To remember. To rebuild."

How cruel...

He knew me well. He knew that I am a soldier at heart.  
That I would try to obey, as any good soldier must.  
How can I live while he keeps dying in my mind?

He loved me enough to trust me beyond Death.  
He loved me.  
And I must try.

Because he loved me.

**xxx**

THE END of LA9


End file.
